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We are delighted to announce that Pam Haworth was elected as President of the Association for the next two years at the AGM on Saturday 12th December.

Outgoing President Garry Whittle welcomes Pam Haworth into office

The Haworth family has thrown itself into the sport of swimming and all members have been active enthusiasts in the aquatic disciplines. All began their involvement with Preston SC in the 1970s and supported the club across the disciplines. Pam herself is a well-known and highly regarded personality in Synchronised Swimming. Her late husband, Craig, was involved with swimming and synchronised swimming and a technical official in both disciplines. Son Paul has been actively involved in water polo for many years as a player and a coach and as well as coaching club teams he also coached several Northern Counties and Regional teams with great technical insight and aplomb. Daughter Fiona was a top British international synchronised swimmer in her own right and won a medal at the European Championships and competed for Great Britain on several occasions and was Northern Counties solo champion from 1990 and duet champion from 1988 until the Northern Counties finished in 2005. She has since gone on to become a top coach and choreographer in her own right.

Wanting to put something back into the sport herself and in addition to her club responsibilities Pam was elected to the Northern Counties ASA Synchronised Swimming Committee in 1986 and became its Hon Secretary four years later succeeding Irene Williams who had been the founder secretary and she also went on to succeed Irene as the ASA Synchronised Swimming Committee secretary in the 1990s for almost ten years where she was responsible for managing the discipline and organising the national championships. It is fair to say that there is no better Synchronised Swimming Championships than one that Pam has organised.

In 2002 she was appointed the Competition Manager for the Commonwealth Games in Manchester and organised a fantastic celebration of Synchronised Swimming there. That same year she was awarded the Mary Black Award for services to Synchronised Swimming by the ASA.

In 2003 she set up the City of Preston Aquatics Club so that Synchronised Swimming could maintain its position and keep going as the Preston SC re-organised. She has been a member of Lancashire County Executive Committee for many years and once she joined immediately pushed successfully for the inclusion of Synchronised Swimming within the County’s activities.

For her services to the sport in this area she was selected as the ASA North West Region President for 2009-10 having been nominated by Lancashire County. She is thus one of the very few people in any region who will have been Regional President before County President but Pam is no stranger to being unique!

Attachments

The Annual General Meeting of Lancashire County Water Polo & Swimming Association will be held on Saturday 12 December at the Holiday Inn Express Leigh Sports Village, Sale Way, Leigh, WN7 4JY, Tel: 01942 366334. Coffee and tea served from 10:30 am. Meeting to commence at 11:00 a.m.

Congratulations to Sophie Casson of Carnforth Otters who has secured her second World Record with an incredible swim at the ASA National Masters Championships. Sophie claimed the record in the 400M Freestyle for the 30/34yrs age group in a time of 4:15.04, almost thirty seconds ahead of second place.

Sophie ‘s earlier world record was set in October 2013 in the 25-29 year old age category for the same event with a time of 04:15.74.

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Very well done to the Lancashire County Team who have secured the National Inter-Counties Team Competition for an unprecedented fourteenth time in succession.

In an exciting competition at Ponds Forge the Red Rose team beat their White Rose counterparts by 46 points.

Commenting on the victory Girls Team Captain Holly Hibbott said

“It was a great team to be part of. Everyone stepped up and swam really well.

“We were pretty confident coming in to the competition, I think we are often seen to be the underdog behind Yorkshire as they have a very strong team, but we always seem to pull it out of the bag. I think it adds a little bit of pressure being so successful in the past, but it is just a bit of fun.”

Lancashire Association would like to congratulate Southport’s Holly Hibbott on her fantastic achievement winning gold in the 800m Freestyle.

Holly Hibbott stormed to 800m freestyle gold after a nail-biting final at the Baku 2015 European Games. The 15-year-old kept pace with the rest of the field for much of the race before pulling clear in the final 100m. She held off Russia’s Anastasiia Kirpichnikova in the final few metres to win gold in 8:39.02.

Holly said: “I didn’t really expect to win gold but I was hoping that I could do it. I’ve got world juniors at the end of August so I’ll go out there and see what I can do and then look ahead to 2020 but for now it would be nice to add more medals here in Baku”

Lancashire WP&SA are pleased to announce the launch of the second round of the Club Development Grant Fund.

The full details and application form are below.

Please note that the closing date for submissions is 31st July 2015 and all applications should be submitted electronically to the e-mail address specified on the form. Please ensure that you receive an automatic acknowledgement when submitting the form.

Clubs should note that coaching/teaching aquatics courses will not qualify for the grant, as funding for such courses is already provided under the Pat Gabbitas Bursary.